The kind of relationship which must exist between the rich and benevolent classes and the ignorant poor, must be a closer one in the future than has ever been in the past, and of a different character. In earlier times the isolation and separation which are common between the various orders of society in America, were unknown. There are many countries in which the powerful and opulent feel an obligation resting upon them to be the guardians and social providence of the weak and the humble. Hence the two classes are united to each other by ties of respect and order on the part of the indigent, and of care and protection on the part of the wealthy. The sense of pecuniary insecurity is there little felt, and the ignorant poor are not left to the machinations of any trickster whose interest it may be to deceive them. It is for this reason that even in societies where the oppression of the poor and weak is, in other ways, infinitely greater than in this country, riots and seditions are difficult to create. It is because of the social providence which, theoretically, and, in an appreciable degree, practically, the Southern master extends over his slaves, that it is so difficult to arouse them to insurrection. True, in the case of the slave and the landed peasant, the security from physical want is purchased by the sacrifice of other and higher advantages, but to a large proportion of the ignorant and the weak the means of life are more important than any other blessings.
In accordance with the spirit of our institutions, we enter as equals into the competitive struggle of life, where all cannot be gainers, and where it is inevitable that the strong and the intelligent should succeed, while the feeble and the ignorant must fail. But as both classes have been admitted freely into the race, there is no feeling on the part of the winners of duty or obligation toward the losers. If one chooses to be charitable, he may; if not, society has no claim upon him, no right to _expect_ that he will make the care of others a part of his duty or his business. Thus the community is arrayed in two great classes: the intelligent, the strong in mind, and those of larger capacities, who, as a class, are rich, on the one side; and the ignorant, the weak-minded, the crude, who, as a body, are poor, on the other. A great gulf separates these two classes, who have nothing in common, and society rests on a social basis composed of forlorn, dissatisfied, ignorant people, developing day by day still more the accompaniments of ignorance and poverty--brutality, viciousness, drunkenness, and ferocity. This separation has too long continued, has too long left the country a prey to political demagogues, who have plunged it into repeated turmoils, and finally into civil war, by being able to operate upon the fears and feelings of the ignorant, deprived of all natural and proper guidance. It is a question, not only of duty, but of safety, for the rich and intelligent, whether they will suffer the lower orders to remain in their wretchedness and sullen dissatisfaction, sinking daily into still deeper degradation, and engendering still more bitter hatred; or whether they will accept their proper position as the organized guides and permanent social providence of the weak, and faithfully perform its functions.